Introduction

Are you ready for some content creation and marketing? Fudge yes, you are!

Content marketing is not easy, it takes a lot of elbow grease to create valuable content and even more to promote it!

The promotion part is something that many folks tend to miss when looking at a content marketing strategy. A general rule of thumb is you should spend 30% of your time creating content and 70% promoting it. That’s why we created this checklist you can use to promote the content you work so hard to create.

Fortunately, the marketing part is something we'll all walk through together. We've got a lovely checklist here outlining what is needed and why to guide you through that 70%. Disclaimer: this process is optimised for English speakers, but the knowledge nuggets remain true.

The goal is for you to get inside the mind of a potential Idyoma user and imagine what kind of things they may want to read.

It doesn't have to be about language - though that's always a safe bet. It could be about studying abroad or travelling. It could be about sexy new apps. It could be about tourism or simply a piece about why your city is worth a visit. You could interview an Idyoma user or someone who speaks a lot of languages. You could make listicles of gifs or make video content.

Point is, there's a lot options out there. Carry on through the checklist to find out how to become an expert content creator and marketer!

Preparation:

Enter the blog

So, the first step in this checklist is to access the company blog!

Visit the idyoma blog to get an idea of the kind of content that we are aiming for. When you get the idea, don't hesitate any longer and start writing! Though we encourage blog posts that are related to languages, you're free to take other relevant topics as well. Let your creative juices flow and write something of which you can be proud!

Ensure your content is epic

Take a long hard look at your content and make sure that (within reason) it is as good as you can possibly make it.

Think about what idyoma does and how we function. Think about who uses us and where those people live. Put yourself in the mind of an idyoma user - what strange thoughts are they thinking?

Your post can be about anything, but try to make it good. Long or short are both fine, but give the reader something they want to read and preferably with a title they want to click on. - but lets not use clickbait, yeah?

The huge caveat to this checklist is that your content must be top bloody notch. If you create crap content, most of these techniques will yield little to no results and will be a huge waste of time.

Most importantly make sure it is something you would want to read.

Prepare your post

Classic Bobby....

Okay - last few things to check. Make sure you have an image on your blog post. Make sure you've added a load of lovely tags to help google find it. And make sure you've filled in a couple of the other sections on the blog editor.

The next step is to prepare a summary of your content. The latter should include the following:

Post Headline

Remember to prepare a variety of headlines (5-10); keep the best for yourself then use the rest for posting on social media, content syndication and content repurposing (ie naming a slide show or pdf etc).

Brief Description

Write a few of these, one to three sentences long. These are needed when submitting to many sites

Once you’ve prepared your post, it's time to start promoting! Keep going with the content promotion checklist to generate a huge wave of traffic to every piece of content you create.

Content Promotion Checklist:

Share on social media

This one is fairly obvious; share the post across your social media channels. Record your progress with the sub-checklist below.

1

Facebook Profile (Status Update)

2

Twitter – use some #hastags because everyone loves #hashtags

3

LinkedIn Status Update - this is your professional work, after all.

4

Pinterest – Pin all images (all epic content has images)

5

Instagram – Post 1-2 images from the post, and link below.

6

Ask friends and family members to share

Remember to promote other idyoma content too. When you see a blog post by another Ambassador give them a boost. #PassItForward!

Submit some screenshots (welcome to idyoma)

Another pretty straightforward task now - you need to submit some screenshots!

Don't worry about doing this immediately, if you don't want to. You can wait as long as you think is necessary for your post to reach it's maximum potential in terms of likes.

In order for us to reward you with the appropriate amount of points, you'll have to upload screenshots of your blogs, social media posts and accumulated likes to the Google Drive.

Perform outreach

Okay, I'll be honest with you, this one is a lot of work so consider it optional.

However, if you intend to make it in the blog game in the long run, this page is the most important one. Not only will this work as great marketing for your content, but the list you create from these steps could remain highly valuable to you in the years to come! #networking #connections #hashtag

Outreach means manually emailing, tweeting, tagging and even calling people to tell them about your content. Yes, yes, this sounds like hard work and truthfully it is, but sometimes you have to do things that don’t scale to get the ball rolling.

Outreach is arguably the most important thing for a new blogger. Check out how Alex Turnbull got over 1,000 subscribers to his blog from one post thanks to blogger outreach!

To start with outreach, you first need to create a list of bloggers you want to target. There are a few considerations here. First, they should be relevant to your niche. Don’t contact bloggers who blog in a completely different area to you. Secondly, as always, your content must be awesome!

Another tip here is to look for “up and comer” bloggers as they may be easier to contact and get less requests than really popular bloggers.

Submit to social bookmarking sites & directories

Now you need to submit your content to social bookmarking sites and directories.

Again, this is the real deal when it comes to online promotion. Consider the levels of commitment found on this page to be optional, but try to submit to at least 3 high traffic directories in appropriate places.

Social Bookmarking sites can generate a huge spike of traffic; landing the front page of a large Subreddit can yield thousands of visitors. But lots of them can generate a few hundred visitors here or there. If you get a few up votes on a rage of the sites below you can easily generate over 1000 visitors to your posts, great for initial shares to your page.

There are a number of other general social bookmarking sites, some of them get some decent traffic, all of them are good for backlink juice. To automate your social bookmarking submissions, use OnlyWire.

Onlywire will submit to 30+ social bookmarking sites at once, you can even set it up to pull your RSS feed from the blog so you don’t have to post at all.

Plus you can pay someone on Fiverr to set it all up for just $5, an effective, cheap and automated way to do social bookmarking submissions.

Submit for syndication

Next up in the content promotion checklist is submitting your content for syndication.

If you ever want to consider writing or social media as a career path, I suggest you read this page intently. We ask that you reach out to 3 syndicators as a minimum for each piece of content you publish.

Content syndication can be a great way to get some solid spikes in traffic. You will need to pick your best content and pitch sites on republishing your posts. But, there are drawbacks…

You would think that Google would rank the original blog post before any syndicated versions. In a lot of cases, however, that doesn’t happen. The thinking behind this is that Google ranks the site where people prefer to read the post. So, there is potential that you could lose out on some search engine traffic.

However, at Idyoma we don't really mind if Forbes show up ahead of us in Google's list for a particular article. Forbes should link to the Idyoma article at the bottom of their page - this creates what is known as a "backlink", and they're very useful for Search Engine Optimisation and making Google happy.

Self Syndication

There are a few publishing platforms popping up that allow you to “Self Syndicate” your posts onto a different platform. The biggest platforms at the moment are Medium and LinkedIn and Examiner. These platforms are more like blogging except your blog posts can gain additional distribution through the respective network of the site.

We recommend you self syndicate all of your posts and include a "originally published here" backlink. This helps you and your public professional image while giving Idyoma a little backlink in the process.

Post on related facebook groups

There are groups on all topics on many platforms. Find groups related to your content and post a link back to your content.

You know how to find them. Search around and share your delightful content with new people. Remember, strangers are just friends we haven't marketed to yet.

Comment on related blog posts

Posting on relevant high-traffic blogs can bring in a bit of traffic; it won’t be anything monstrous, but it can bring a steady stream of a few thousand visits a month if done well.

If you want to really generate traffic from blog commenting, you will need to be the first commenter. To do that you can use a tool like Mention to watch for new posts in your on high traffic blogs, then quickly jump on to reply.

Post on Q&A sites

Search major Q&A sites for posts related to your content and post responses in the answers when appropriate.

When appropriate, Steve. It's not spammy if it's appropriate. It may feel spammy, but it's not.

If you aren't already familiar with the top Q&A sites, see below for our pick of the crop.

Reverse engineer your competition

Part of the content promotion checklist is not only about boosting your post - it's about combating the competition for the top search spot.

Now, I know what you're thinking, but bear with me. Read until the end and you will see the tremendous value that can come from just a little competitor research.

Do a search on Topsy or Google and find where your competition is getting their backlinks for their most popular posts. Their top backlinks are also likely generating the most amount of traffic to their page.

To find the backlinks, use a tool such as Open Site Explorer or SEO Spy Glass. Look for backlinks from other blogs and social bookmarking sites. Then submit your content to the same sources, either via a submission link or by reaching out to the blogger/author as we talked about in the blogger outreach section above.

You can also reverse engineer who shared your competitor’s blog posts. Use a tool like Topsy to do a search on popular posts by your competitors and see who shared them, chances are they will share similar content. Contact them using the outreach strategies below to have them share your content

See! I told you to bear with me. Now you have a list of the people who are most influential when it comes to this kind of content. You've not attacked your competition or anything like that. You've simply figured out who you need to reach out to next time.

Deep-link to the content from older posts

If you’ve been blogging for a while you probably have a few older posts that get consistent traffic. Go back and try to find the most relevant/high traffic posts and work in a link to your new piece of content.

Google likes this and it generates more traffic.

Repurpose your content

Repurposing your content can be one of the most powerful ways to increase the number of views your content is getting. Whilst keeping the medium relevant to the content you are repurposing, aim to get as many different avenues out of a single piece of content as possible - maximum reward for relatively little extra input!

This process is ideal for any article which is specifically about Idyoma. Or simply a great technique to get used to for those of you who want to go the whole hog. The real deal. The bees knees. The cats pyjamas. I think I've lost it somewhere...

Record the avenues you utilize with the sub-checklist and form fields below.

Turn into Slide Deck

The first step is to break down your post into a slide deck. This is generally pretty easy, have a different slide for each subheading or list point, however your post is structured. Add in your images and related links. A good ideas is to create a branded template that you can just plugin all of your posts to make this process smoother.

Once you have made your slide presentation, submit it to the below sites:

You can then take your slide deck, and use it to record a video. Draft up a script, then voice over it while reading your slides. You will want to make sure you have a good microphone before doing this as quality audio can make all the difference.

There are a few sites out there that you can use to turn your posts into infographics, then submit to infographic directories. This can be a little more work but well worth it if you have already spent lots of time researching and writing the content.

Celebrate

Congratulations! You've completed the blog content promotion checklist and can now watch that view count fly. You are now a master content marketer. I've figuratively given you gold. People pay good money for this kind of course.

Celebrate with your squad and get ready to start on the next post!

Then check out one of our other checklists and see what else can be done...